Posts By John Baker

On 2 September, 2013, Dublin City Council voted to name the newest bridge over the River Liffey the Rosie Hackett Bridge. What makes this a landmark decision is that it seems to have been the first authoritative decision taken by a public body in Ireland – and perhaps even in Europe – to have used the voting procedure known as the Borda Count, referred to in the Council’s proceedings as a Preferendum (Dublin City Council 2013a, item 24). This report summarises the process, analyses the results, and discusses some of the technical issues that arise with this method of voting. It concludes that the procedure was well suited to the task in hand.

Background

The process for naming the bridge was referred to the Commemorative Naming Committee chaired by Councillor Dermot Lacey. According to Lacey (personal communication), the committee agreed from the start that it would use an open, participatory process to find a name, and invited submissions from the public. In the course of the process, it received thousands of items of correspondence, including official applications for 85 names. This initial list was narrowed down to about thirty through a consensual process within the committee, starting by eliminating names of people who were still alive or had died less than twenty years earlier, as well as figures who had already been honoured by a public naming. The resulting list was then further reduced by discussion within the committee, leading in stages to a list of seventeen and then ten (Dublin City Council 2013b).

The list of ten was reduced within the committee to a shortlist of five, using a version of the Borda Count vote among the six members in attendance. The final shortlist was put to the full council, where all fifty-one members participated in a Borda Count vote. Details of these votes are given below.

A Basic Income is a payment from the state to every resident on an individual basis, without any means test or work requirement.

It would be sufficient to live a frugal but decent lifestyle without supplementary income from paid work.

The idea of Basic Income is being advanced world-wide as part of the solution to the issues facing today’s world.

Come join us to discuss the Basic Income solution and to plan activities for the coming 12 months.

Programme:

1:00-1:45 Welcome and light lunch

1:45-3:10 Recent developments in Basic Income internationally

Keynote speaker: Yannick Vanderborght, one of the leading figures in the new wave of basic income activists. Professor of Political Science at Saint-Louis University, Brussels; Chair of Regional Coordination Committee of Basic Income Earth Network; co-author with Philippe Van Parijs of L’allocation universelle (2005) and co-editor of Basic income: An anthology of contemporary research (2013) and other books on basic income.

Yannick will speak on transnational cooperation in the campaign for basic income and on recent developments in the theory and politics of basic income. Followed by a participatory discussion.

3:10-3:30 Tea and coffee break

3:30-5:00 Advancing Basic Income in Ireland

Brief presentation and participatory discussion

Afterwards: social gathering in The Swan, Aungier Street.

Further information on basic income is available at basicincomeireland.com and on Facebook – Basic Income Ireland and Twitter: @basicincomeirl.

I’ll be writing more about this at the weekend but I think this is a good standalone clip from evidence to the banking inquiry given by Prof. Ed Kane on Wednesday 28 Jan 2015. He was asked by Deputy Pearse Doherty to elaborate on the statement below which was made in a paper that […]

Shadows never go away. Might be you don’t see them, but they’re always clinging to your heels.” A Song of Ice and Fire When I was a child in primary school my way of dealing with Irish class was to find a word in the question that matched a word in the text and hope […]

Reprieved! Reprieved! I was sure of it. When you’re most despairing The clouds may be clearing.” The Threepenny Opera. Patrick Honohan, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, will be before the Bank Inquiry committee this week to talk about his 2010 report into the crisis. We will be able to hear his explanation […]

I do not think it is fair to say people partied. People just lived a little better than they otherwise would have done because of the bubble.” Peter Nyberg under questioning from Deputy Pearse Doherty, 17 Dec 2014. Peter Nyberg’s appearance at the Irish bank inquiry marked the beginning of the context phase, the purpose […]